At the Heart of the Universe

by Samuel Shem

  Xiao Lu wonders why he is itching his arm and tugging his ear and smiling, and offers him more tea. He shakes his head no. She watches as he clumsily gestures, and then tries again, and finally she gets it—he wants to know if there are deer nearby. She nods her head yes, and makes the gesture of feeding them from her hand.

  “Wow! They’re just like her sister Tao said, they’re tame and she feeds them.” Katie points to her watch, and asks, “When?”

  Xiao Lu says, “At dusk and dawn.” Katie doesn’t understand. Xiao Lu gestures, and draws a sun:

  And then she gestures that the deer can be fed when the sun goes down, and when the sun comes up again over the horizon.

  “Can we stay till sundown, Mom? Please, Mom, can we?”

  “You heard Dad—there’s no way we can walk back when it’s dark, especially not with the logs.” She sees Pep wince, and feels bad she mentioned it. “But maybe tomorrow morning?”

  “Deer are nocturnal! We can’t walk to here when it’s dark either. We have to stay!”

  “We can’t, dear, there’s no room.”

  “Why not? We can just sleep on the floor? It’ll be a lot warmer than that dump we stayed in last night.”

  “I don’t think so, dear.”

  “Please, Mom?”

  “Sorry, but no. We’ll ask for a warmer, cleaner place—”

  “But this already is a lot better than—”

  “No means no!”

  Katie is startled—she almost never has heard this harsh voice from her mother. Her face falls. She glances at Clio, hoping that she’ll say she’s sorry for this tone of voice, but no. She’s just standing there with her arms crossed over her chest.

  Katie turns back to Xiao Lu, and motions for her to draw more animals.

  Xiao Lu feels the tension between the two of them, like a bolt of thunder that sometimes shakes the little hut. She draws a monkey, as she did on the map. Chun smiles. She mimes a monkey, excited and frantic and looking here and there and snatching Chun’s hat—all great fun, she and Chun laughing together. She gives the hat back and then draws the monkey character:

  Chun stares at it and then calls out to the woman and man happily, and points at it. She understands the “joking” part, the way the monkey moves here and there, jumping and swinging. The woman nods and smiles, but it’s not a happy smile, no.

  And then, after pausing to roll the brush tip on the inkstone, Xiao Lu again simplifies the complex character to a calligraphic emblem:

  She goes on with other animals, each time starting with the line drawing of the animal, having Chun repeat the Chinese name, and then translating the drawing, not literally but through the spirit of the animal and the meaning of the animal to humans, into the character, and then finally making it simple, a few elegant free strokes that turn the character into an art that lifts it and the viewer somewhere else. With each new character she sees that her little Chun is getting more involved—not shy at all!—repeating the Chinese words beautifully! Xiao Lu claps her hands together in delight.

  As Clio watches, she can see how skillful Xiao Lu is at this. It is amazing how this woman has found a way to connect with Katie through Katie’s two passions—drawing and animals. And she’s moving on now to other images—a boat, bamboo—but Xiao Lu has picked up, in Katie’s response to the drawing of the monkeys, that this is it, for her. Neither Clio nor Pep can draw worth a damn. Or pronounce Chinese words.

  “Mom, will you ask her if I can try one?” Clio knew this was coming. “Mom, you’re not listening. Can I try?”

  “Yes, dear, but be careful with that ink—don’t get dirty.”

  Katie bristles at the words; it’s just what her mother always tells her when she drops her off at Mary’s Farm. “It doesn’t bother her—look at her fingers, okay?”

  Xiao Lu takes all this in, and when Chun motions to ask if Xiao Lu can guide her in doing it, it is the moment she has yearned for. All this time, she has imagined this moment, taking her daughter’s hand, transmitting her understanding of the flow of the brush, the ink, to that little hand. She takes to the moment with delight.

  Chun has the brush in her hand, Xiao Lu’s hand around hers. They start with a simple horizontal line, which Xiao Lu, by holding up a finger, indicates is the character for “one.” Xiao Lu directs the movement of her hand, and out comes the line. Chun indicates that she wants to try it for herself. Xiao Lu shakes her head and says, “No, you’re not ready to do it alone yet.” Chun insists. She lets her try.

  The brush splays out, the point dissolves, the line isn’t a line but a blob and then a raggedy mess. Chun is dismayed and looks up at Xiao Lu, who laughs to reassure her. Xiao Lu takes the brush and puts Chun’s hand around hers—her child has such long fingers, her own aren’t much longer. With Chun feeling the movement, Xiao Lu shows her: she lowers the brush straight onto the paper, waits a moment, and then with a steady hand takes the brush to the right toward the end of the stroke, waits again for a moment, and then lifts the brush slant-wise backward and upward. They look together at the stroke. It starts and ends with a taut, straight, somewhat slanting line.

  With Xiao Lu’s hand around hers, Chun tries it. The brush holds together, and the line is at least a line:

  Chun turns to the woman and man and gestures to the line excitedly. They smile and nod. The woman’s smile is pained.

  Xiao Lu indicates that there’s another way to do the brushstroke. Again putting Chun’s hand on hers, at the left end she guides her to make a little circle that binds the brush point to the paper, then lowers the brush even farther onto the paper, waits for a moment, and carries it on to the right end of the stroke. She pauses before taking the brush a tiny bit downward and returning back in the stroke she’s just completed, at the same time carefully lifting the brush off the paper. The stroke is different from the other at the ends: there is a softly rounded beginning and ending.

  Chun cries out her pleasure and wonder, says a word that sounds to Xiao Lu like “Coo!”

  Clio watches Katie getting more and more engrossed. Xiao Lu’s hand leads hers over the white paper. Katie is totally into it. The two black-haired heads are close together under the lamplight. Close and still.

  After a while, Clio goes over to Pep, now lying down on the bed. She settles into the Adirondack chair. The room is too small for them to talk honestly about what is going on, and the pelting rain prevents them from going outside. Clio scans Pep’s face for any trace of concern about all this, and finds none. She sits on the bed, close to him.

  “Pep,” she whispers, “are you worried about this?”

  He sits up. “Nope, why?”

  “Because maybe, just maybe, she’ll, I don’t know, really like her and want to stay here with her longer?”

  “No way. She said she wanted to go home.”

  “That was before the calligraphy.”

  “Nah. This isn’t her thing, this ‘roughing it.’ Let her play. Then we go.”

  “Please, honey, I’m starting to have a bad feeling about all this.”

  “I thought you said this was healthy for her.”

  “Yes, but I, well... I mean, suppose Katie wants to...” She tries to catch herself. “I know it’s crazy, never mind.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I’m embarrassed.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time with me, right? Fire away.”

  “Look... I mean maybe all these old, maybe even bio forces could get stirred up, and she starts to really, I don’t know, care, or attach... ?”

  “Wait. Hold it. Crazy thought. And even if she did, she’s ours and—”

  “Even if she did? You think it’s possible?”

  “No, I don’t—”

  “Well, then why’d you say it?”

  “I didn’t say it, I said—”

  “What are you two arguing abou
t?” Katie turns back to them, her fingers all black, a fresh smudge on her sleeve.

  “Nothing, darling,” Clio says, surprised to find herself staring more at the indelible ink on the sleeve and fingers than into her eyes. “It’s getting late. Just finish up and we’ll go.”

  She turns back to her work, her head close to her birth mom’s.

  “Nothing to worry about, hon,” Pep says. “We’re stressed out, all of us—no sleep, bad food, hypothermia—and now all this?! It’s damn well exhausting. We let ’em finish up her drawing lesson, and that’s it. End of story. Take a little rest.” He yawns and lies back down on the bed, and is soon asleep.

  The rain, to Clio, is no longer comforting, but seems to reflect her inner turmoil—periods of drops beating regularly as a metronome on the roof tiles, and tremendous gusts of Beethoven, and then almost stopping, but not quite. She wonders how long they’ll be required to stay here, and how to—without letting on to Katie about her own concern—leave. There’s something about not having words that gives Xiao Lu an advantage. And she shows absolutely no sign of doubt, or anxiety, or any other all-American neurotic splinters there. A simple, pragmatic intelligence, sparked by art. Clio feels strangely diminished in this wordless contest. She closes her eyes and tries to meditate, following the breath.

  “Mom—look! I made this one all by myself. Guess what it is?”

  Clio goes over. Katie shows her the character she’s just drawn:

  “It looks like someone walking, like a person?”

  “Almost. Keep guessing!”

  Clio stares at it, unable to go farther.

  “Scraggghhhumph!”

  They all turn to Pep, snoring—and burst out laughing. For a moment, three generations of women share a laugh at a universal and problematic quality of men.

  “A man?” Clio asks.

  “Yes! See, it’s like a man walking.”

  “That’s great, darling.”

  Xiao Lu nods proudly.

  “Xiao Lu helped me on the others but this I did all by myself, do you see?”

  “Yes, darling. Can you do a woman?”

  “Nope. I’ll ask Xiao Lu.”

  Even Katie’s use of the name is a little jab in her gut. “Do that, yes.”

  Xiao Lu points to herself, Clio, and Katie, and draws the character:

  “I see,” says Katie, “it’s a woman! It’s like... a more solid thingee, a bigger body than a man and maybe even with breasts too? It’s more than the man figure, y’see?”

  “Yes, dear, she has a lot more to her.”

  Then Xiao Lu draws another character:

  She points to Katie, and then to Pep—indicating a Katie-sized version of him. They get it—the character for “child,” or maybe “boy.” She then puts the two characters together:

  “Woman and child?” Katie asks. “Is that what she means?”

  “I believe so.”

  But Xiao Lu is miming something that makes them think of “happy” or maybe “good.” Maybe, maybe not. She draws another character:

  And points to herself.

  “What is it?” Katie asks.

  “Don’t know. Perhaps it’s her name. Is that your name? Is that ‘Xiao Lu’?”

  “Bu,” Xiao Lu says. They nod. They know that this word means “no.”

  “Wait, I know,” Clio says. “It’s just her and me. Not you, Katie. Maybe it means grown-up woman?” Clio points to herself, and then to Xiao Lu, indicating that this word means the two of them are similar in some way.

  Xiao Lu points to Clio and shakes her head and finger vigorously for “No!” and says sharply, “Bu!” Then she points back to herself alone, and says, with even more emphasis, “Xiao Lu!”

  They still don’t get it.

  She points to herself, points to her belly, then to Katie, and makes the motion of Katie coming out of her belly. Smiling proudly, she points to the character, “Mama!”

  Clio freezes, startled by the blunt force of this woman’s stating, in front of her daughter, I, not you, am her mother. It echoes with all the times when she first was out with her baby and people said things to her like “Who’s her mother?” and “Where’s her mother?” and “Where’d you get her?” and “How much did she cost?” And the worst, on vacation in St. Martin, talking with a woman at an outdoor barbecue who asked, “Who’s her mother?” and when Clio said, “I am,” shook her head and said, “You can’t be her mother, no.”

  Now the pain of all that comes roaring back. Clio stares at the drawings—stares at the “mother,” who carries within her the seed of her child, and at the “woman,” who is empty, moving frantically to some place of no consequence. Xiao Lu is smiling broadly, as if she has only a child’s awareness of what she has just done. Clio looks to Katie.

  Katie is looking up at her, a rare puzzlement in her eyes.

  “I think, Katie, it’s time to go. Pep? Wake up.” He stirs, but doesn’t awaken.

  Katie senses that something bad has happened between the two women, some crash, like a wave into a cliff. She realizes she’d better obey. “I’ll get him up, Mom.”

  Katie shakes Pep really hard. He rouses himself, grumbling. Katie talks to him.

  Clio hears their conversation dimly. Her mind is spinning—and then stops still, narrowed to a tight focus of rage. She can’t even bring herself to look at Xiao Lu. Survival kicks in. Get Pep and Katie out of here—fast!

  Xiao Lu is startled. The woman roughly pulls their dry clothes down from the string stretched above the stove. They turn their backs and dress. So soon? No!

  Pep senses Clio’s rage and the breakage between the two women. “Okay, Clee, Katie, let’s get a move on.” Trying to control the situation, calm it down, he takes out his camera. Nothing like the distance a camera offers. Objectify this. Souvenir it. Even art it up. But control it, yes. “I’ll just get a few shots to capture this—”

  “We’re leaving now.” Clio says.

  “It’ll just take a sec.” He’s already taking quick shots around the hut. He focuses on Xiao Lu, who tries to hide her face, but the flash catches her.

  She points at Katie, then at the camera. “Please take a picture for me of Chwin?”

  “Chwin” hangs in the air, the only recognizable word in the sentence. Katie and Pep look at Clio.

  “Her name is Katie,” she says firmly, and settles her safari hat on her head.

  “Yeah, Mom, but my whole name is Katie Chun—maybe she doesn’t understand. “I’ll tell her.” Katie points to herself and says slowly, “Katie Chwin.”

  “Katie Chwin,” Xiao Lu says, smiling, thinking, It is the same as in Chinese—her last name is Katie and her first name is Chun. Through gesture, she tells them that she wants them to stay here tonight, and tomorrow when the weather is better they can go on their trip to find the monkeys. She tries to make clear that there is room for them all—she will give up her bed and sleep in the cave, next to the house.

  Katie understands that they can sleep in the bed here while Xiao Lu stays somewhere outside, and explains it to them.

  “I think not, darling,” Clio says tightly, hoping to forestall another fight. She takes a deep breath in, holds it, lets it out slowly. “So!” she announces cheerily, in control again. “Everybody ready?”

  Clio leads. They walk out. The fresh air feels like a godsend.

  30

  The hard rain is spent, fizzled to drizzle. They stand for a moment under the overhanging roof beams, staring at the mossy courtyard and the flat stones curling from the door to the beginning of the path. Xiao Lu comes out carrying her black snake-killer umbrella in one hand, the unlit pine torch in the other. There is the sound of a stream nearby, and a bird. After the rain, the fragrances seem to hang in the air like fruit—earth and pine and jasmine and something else familiar to them all—a whole grove of ming aur
elia growing near the edge of the cliff.

  Clio has a single ming in a large Chinese pot in the living room, a gift from one of the Columbian New Yorkers. The tree is of the bamboo family, but with cloud-like leaves that individually look like the fluffy trees in Chinese mountain paintings—the ones where the towering mountains dwarf the tiny people. The scent of damp ming is unlike any other: fresh, tangy, almost musky, somewhat like eucalyptus, somewhat like spruce. Now, out in the open, the fragrance brings to Clio’s mind the manageable China, the one in a pot in their living room, or in Chinese Restaurant in Columbia.

  Gaining control again, Clio feels her rage unclench. It leaves her shaky and ashamed. How could I have done that? At that crucial moment? Shame washes over her, and clings. Scared, humiliated, she seeks her usual refuge—distance. As Pep takes photos, she senses herself withdrawing into that familiar family paralysis of no feeling, of surface perception and response—what she and her sister Thalia, as teenagers, labeled with scorn—but without awareness, then, of its truth and liability—“The WASP Freeze.” And now the signature word they’d been taught to use to nail that Freeze in place comes to mind: “Quite.” The word brings a glimpse of order, of control, of one step following another surely on a raked gravel path of denial.

  We have done it now, here with her. It’s over. We have found her. Visited her. Like the obligatory Christmastime visit to one of our infuriating Hale aunts. No, not like that. For better or worse, this has been authentic. A world on fire.

  “A few more shots,” Pep says, pleased that his photo-therapy is working, that everybody’s outside in the fresh air, calming down, everybody being friendly again.

  “Do we have to, Dad?”